


Unfinished Fairy Tale

by ltgmars



Category: Arashi (Band)
Genre: F/M, Fairy Tales, Fantasy, Fluff, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-06
Updated: 2011-01-06
Packaged: 2017-10-26 00:17:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/276457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ltgmars/pseuds/ltgmars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ohno is a writer who needs some inspiration. Soon enough, he finds it... in the form of a fairy by the name of Kazunari.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unfinished Fairy Tale

**Author's Note:**

> Fantasy-ish AU! Written for [](http://gimmick-game.livejournal.com/profile)[**gimmick_game**](http://gimmick-game.livejournal.com/) during [](http://je-holiday.livejournal.com/profile)[**je_holiday**](http://je-holiday.livejournal.com/) 2010, originally posted [here](http://community.livejournal.com/je_holiday/102331.html). Special thanks to my beta [aeslis](http://archiveofourown.org/users/aeslis/pseuds/aeslis) for her patience and tireless poking, and to [](http://nicefinalbeam.livejournal.com/profile)[**nicefinalbeam**](http://nicefinalbeam.livejournal.com/) for her sneaky help on this. **ETA:** Oh oh oh also, [](http://zonbiushi.livejournal.com/profile)[**zonbiushi**](http://zonbiushi.livejournal.com/) is the best person in the universe and drew me art for this fic! You can find it over [here](http://community.livejournal.com/je_holiday/102331.html?thread=2168251#t2168251)!

It was a splendid old house with crumbling red brick and tired white pillars and boisterous green vines that buzzed with life as they painted their way toward the roof. The front lawn was the comfortable home of any assortment of flora, and as Aiba walked slowly up the dusty gravel path, he listened with quiet awe to the garden growing around him.

The front door sported a heavy brass knocker, which squeaked roughly as he tapped it against the door. He waited, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as he heard trudging footsteps making their way to the door. It opened with unexpected grace, and on the other end was a round-faced man blinking up at him from behind his glasses.

"Package for you, sir," Aiba said dutifully.

The other man looked down at the package in Aiba's hands -- a beige parcel, tattered and worn at the edges, carrying with it the weight and wisdom of a long journey as it was passed along from carrier to carrier. He looked back up at Aiba and smiled, moving aside and opening the door wider. "Won't you come in?"

  
Ohno Satoshi was a writer. That was as much as Aiba was able to get out of him that first day as they sat in Ohno's kitchen and sipped tea from ornate little cups. Ohno was small in stature and slow to respond, but Aiba could tell that behind the blank looks, there was a carnival. Lights and sounds and stale popcorn and cotton candy, contained chaos bursting forth in one moment and gone the next. Eager and curious, Aiba prodded.

"What are you thinking about?"

Ohno looked up at him, idly rotating his teacup in his hands. "Green."

"Green?" Aiba giggled, overjoyed. What could it mean?

"I was thinking that green is a nice color," Ohno said simply. And he left it at that.

.

Aiba found Ohno more and more enchanting as time passed. Each week when he was handed a package to deliver to that old house on the corner, he found himself filled with bubbling glee. The old house on the corner was always his last stop of the day, and it always ended with tea with a near-stranger and quiet nonsense conversations. Aiba learned early that he was giving Ohno far too much credit when he looked blankly at a spot in the air; he wasn't always bobbing on the carousel or enjoying the view from the top of the ferris wheel. Sometimes he really was just looking at a spot in the air.

Aiba liked it. He liked sitting down after a long day on his feet. He liked noticing how the garden changed each week. He liked stepping into the old house and spending the next hour wrapped up in a hiccup in time. He liked the sketches sprawled across the drawing room table, the letters practically falling off the pages and spilling onto the floor. He liked thinking that he was interrupting something incredible, that his very presence in the house injected enough ordinary into Ohno Satoshi's life to give them both a well-deserved break.

The door opened just as Aiba pulled the knocker up. Startled, Aiba watched it stutter against the door. Ohno looked up at him with a grin. "Aiba-chan, come on in."

"You're lively today," Aiba said, smiling.

"That's my last package," Ohno said, nodding at the parcel. In the kitchen, the kettle hooted needily, and Ohno looked adorably surprised. He floated toward the kitchen to turn off the stove.

"Are you that happy to have me gone?" Aiba teased, slipping into his chair at the table.

Ohno scrunched his face up dramatically. "That's not what I mean." He pushed Aiba's cup toward him with a gentle tinkle against the saucer and poured the water in. Steam rose up and Ohno wiped impatiently at his glasses. That week, like every week, Aiba giggled.

"So what's so special about those packages?" Aiba watched as Ohno dropped sugar cubes into Aiba's tea. The hard, manufactured colors of the sugar cube box were jarring against the soft white table cloth, and Aiba was fascinated by the sight of it.

Ohno slumped back into his chair and picked up his own teacup. "It's a set of books from my grandfather. He told me to read each one as it comes in and then to line them all up when I'm done. He said that I'll find my inspiration then."

Aiba hummed and nodded. "That sounds like a nice gift."

Ohno didn't respond. He put his cup down and reached toward the parcel, slowly peeling the paper open. It was a thick book with a craggy leather cover, suitably old for the house that contained it. Aiba wanted to touch it.

"Can I see it?"

Ohno nodded and wordlessly handed him the book. Aiba gingerly turned it over in his hands. It felt warm. "You read a book this big every week?"

Ohno grinned. "Open it." Aiba did, slowly and reverently, to a random page in the middle. It was... "Empty. See? I can't actually read that well. My grandfather's been sending me empty books."

Aiba laughed. "Wait a minute, how can a writer not read?"

Ohno smirked. "Why do you think my grandfather's sending me inspiration? Here, let me see it." Aiba clapped the book shut and offered it up to Ohno, who slid his chair back and stood up. Aiba watched as he took the book in his hand and headed toward the drawing room. "Aiba-chan, are you coming?"

"Hm?" Aiba stood up quickly, wincing as his bumped into the table and spilled tea onto the tablecloth -- "Ah, sorry," he muttered at the growing stain -- before hurrying into the drawing room afterwards.

Satisfied with Aiba's presence, Ohno turned away and slid the book halfway into its slot, snug between the book before it and the side of the bookshelf. He turned back to Aiba and grinned. "Let's see if inspiration hits." And with an unnecessary flourish that made Aiba chuckle, he pushed the book all the way in.

They waited. Aiba held his breath, somehow pulled into the silly notion that something magical would happen. After a moment, Ohno turned to Aiba with an exaggerated grin and exclaimed, "I'm inspired!"

Aiba's eyes widened. "Really?"

Ohno laughed. "Of course not. Let's go back and finish our tea." He tugged at Aiba's arm to turn him around, leading them back toward the kitchen. Aiba spotted the spilled tea and was just about to apologize when suddenly a bright light flashed from behind them. Warmth billowed toward them like bedsheets just out of the dryer. "What..."

They turned back to the bookshelf to find nothing. Nothing strange, no glowing unicorns or magical self-writing pens. Aiba tilted his head in confusion and turned toward Ohno. "Maybe that was your inspira..."

Atop Ohno's head was a tiny man with thin, translucent wings, wearing a white tuxedo and a matching top hat. He sat with his legs out in front of him, one bent in a little, folding tufts of Ohno's hair over themselves. He brushed glitter off his sleeves, and it floated up and twinkled into the air around him.

Ohno shook his head, trying to dislodge the weight. The little man scowled and grabbed onto strands of his hair, yanking violently. "Hey, be careful down there!" Ohno stilled obediently.

"You're so small," Aiba said in wonder.

The little man turned to him, unconsciously petting Ohno's hair with his round hands. "You're so big," he responded dryly.

"What's going on?" Ohno asked quietly.

The little man flapped his wings lazily and lifted into the air, his feet dragging through Ohno's hair until he was completely airborne. He flew forward and turned sharply, fluttering so close to Ohno's face that Ohno looked cross-eyed. The little man folded his arms across his chest and gave him a stern look. "I'm your inspiration."

"Oh." Ohno smiled and brought his hands up, giving the little man a place to stand. "Nice to meet you. Would you like some tea?"

The little man smiled, and his arms dropped down to his sides. He nodded pleasantly.

Aiba watched all this with quiet incredulity, wondering why Ohno had chosen that day of all days to spike his tea. No wonder the box of sugar cubes had stood out so much.

"Oh, you should meet Aiba-chan." The little man looked up at Aiba and frowned. "Aiba-chan, this is..."

"Kazunari," the little man supplied. "I'm a fairy. And _you_ don't believe in me."

Aiba looked from Kazunari to Ohno, back to Kazunari, back to Ohno. "And you do?" Aiba said earnestly.

Ohno shrugged. "My grandfather told me about fairies." In his hands, Kazunari nodded, satisfied.

"I'm here to inspire him."

***

Fairies don't know anything about where they come from. There isn't a higher order of fairy gods that place them where they end up for their assignments. They don't clock in at fairy business parks to write up fairy documents or take fairy coffee breaks. They don't climb up fairy social ladders or have fairy families to come home to. They are ephemeral. They come into being when they're needed, and once they've done their job, they disappear again.

Kazunari doesn't care about any of it. He's just here to do his job, and at the end of it all, that'll be that.

He spends the first few minutes observing. He wonders for a short philosophical moment if fairy protocol is hardwired into his brain somewhere and if this is what he's supposed to be doing, but he shrugs, brushes more glitter off his tuxedo, and chalks it all up to fairy nature. There's no use in questioning anything -- the deep thoughts just get in the way sometimes. He has a job to do, after all, and he intends to do it.

Their initial conversation is nothing like what Kazunari expects. He's not sure why he has expectations anyway, but he knows that fairies are unusual in his charge's world. He waits for questions like "Who are you?" and "Why are you here?" and "How do you work?" and "Can you stop glittering on my furniture, please?" But from the moment he lands on his charge's head in the drawing room, he can tell that his charge won't be the type to question.

The companion -- Aiba -- is different. Aiba is curious. He likes to know why things work the way they do. As his charge sets down a teacup big enough for Kazunari to take a bath in, Aiba sits and stares. He shifts, and he thinks and thinks. Kazunari can feel it in the air with each twitch of his wings -- Aiba's brain is frenetic. It molds itself into all kinds of stupid and useless theories about fairies that Kazunari doesn't want to hear.

"Where do you come from?"

"Thin air."

"Do you have a wand?"

"Not the kind you want to see."

"Are you always this small?"

"I have been for the past four minutes, yes."

"Do you keep him safe?"

"That's a guardian angel. I don't think fairies communicate with angels."

"Can you get rid of this tea stain?"

"Do it yourself!"

Aiba laughs, and the corners of his eyes crinkle. He looks delighted. Kazunari smirks, satisfied. The questions have stopped.

Kazunari's charge smiles down at him. "So you're here to inspire me?"

"Mmmhmm." Kazunari turns to the teacup in front of him, flapping enough to stand and walk around the cup. He should be gracious, but how is he supposed to drink the tea...?

"Oh, is the teacup too big for you? I think I have a contact lens you can use..."

Kazunari grimaces.

"Ah, I don't wear them. My sister sent them to me, but I like wearing glasses."

Kazunari smiles. "Okay then. Thanks..." He trails off.

Aiba shifts in his seat toward the charge and giggles. "Leader, you never introduced yourself! He doesn't know what to call you!"

"Oh!" The charge makes a surprised face, and Kazunari and Aiba both laugh. "I'm Ohno Satoshi. You can call me Satoshi, if you want. Since I'm calling you by your first name."

Kazunari shrugs. "I only have a first name."

"Ah, right. Well. Call me whatever you want, then." Ohno looks sincere. He seems kind and friendly without trying. Kazunari likes the looks of him.

"Ohno-san it is, then. And _you_ I'll just call Aiba."

"Hey!"

.

Kazunari doesn't know if he's inspiring Ohno at all. He spends much of the first day watching Ohno shuffle around the house and go about his life. It seems that Ohno's something of a recluse who's rejected most forms of technology, so he spends most of his time doing nothing productive at all.

(Aiba explains it to him in hushed tones as he leaves. "One time, my cell phone started ringing, and Leader didn't even know what it was!"

"How did he react?"

"He tilted his head and frowned a little, but he didn't say anything. I think he just thought he was hearing things!"

Kazunari finds himself snickering at the story, and he decides to give Aiba's name an honorific after all.)

Ohno mostly draws and writes -- or at least tries to -- and eats and stares at things. In fact, Kazunari finds it hard to discern whether or not his presence has any impact on Ohno at all, let alone a positive, generative, creative kind of impact.

"Are you rich?" Kazunari asks. "How do you afford to live?"

Ohno sets Kazunari down on the arm of the couch and brushes his hands on his pants unconsciously. Glitter streaks into the grooves of the denim before twinkling away. "This is my parents' old house, but I didn't want to leave when they decided to move to the city, so they left me here alone."

Kazunari smirks. "That doesn't answer my question."

"Oh." Ohno dips his head sheepishly. "They pay for the utilities. Mina-neechan sends me money sometimes to keep me alive. And Aiba-chan visits every week to keep me company."

"All of this because you're slaving over the next bestseller, right?"

Ohno makes a noise in the affirmative.

"You're a bit of a freeloader, aren't you?" Kazunari grins.

Ohno raises an eyebrow. "You're a bit of a smartass, aren't you?"

Kazunari grins even wider.

.

Fairies don't sleep. Their bodies are only physical enough to be tangible; they don't use up energy, so they don't need to recover any. Fairies don't usually eat or drink either, though some fairies sip tea out of contact lenses because their charges look so happy when they do. Happiness tends to lead to inspiration, or so Kazunari's instincts tell him. And sometimes inspiration comes in dreams, so sending him to bed happy after a shared cup of evening tea seems like the most effective course of action.

Kazunari sits on the windowsill in Ohno's bedroom. At night, Ohno's a rumbler. It's not quite a snore, but it's more involved than just deep breathing. He breathes like he means it, like it's the last breath he's ever going to take, and every time Ohno takes a breath, Kazunari's wings twitch with the density of Ohno's determination. Kazunari turns to look over his shoulder and watch Ohno's chest rise and fall with purpose under the thin sheet, and he wonders for a second whether Ohno's only passionate about something when he isn't thinking about it.

Kazunari turns back around to look at the scenery outside. The forest behind the house is luscious and green, and Kazunari can see little lights dancing, hidden deep in the dark amongst the trees. The forest fairies are enjoying the warm summer night.

.

Ohno draws more than he writes. Kazunari's not sure if he should be doing something about it -- he knows he's been assigned a _writer_ to inspire, but the drawings are wonderful, and he doesn't want to see them go. What Ohno can't seem to put into words he expresses in art, in curves and dots and splotches of ink. Long, sweeping lines come together to tell a story in much more eloquence than Ohno's ever given credit for. Kazunari knows that there's a lot going on in that mind since his ballpoint pen is always saying something. It's all just coming out wrong when it's constrained within tiny character boxes.

"What's going on in this one?" Kazunari prods. Put it into words, put it into words, put it into words...

Ohno answers without looking up from the napkin. "It's a seahorse."

Kazunari frowns. He doesn't see it. But Ohno speaks to his confusion.

"It's not done yet."

Kazunari sighs, and the temperature in the room bobs down and back up. "Keep at it, then."

.

The latest news that Aiba introduces to the world after he flops into a chair and says it's too hot for tea and blows teasingly at Kazunari just to see him struggle against the gust of air is that there is a girl that he likes that he needs to convince to go on a date with him.

Kazunari listens disinterestedly and lifts the tea stains from his tuxedo as Aiba goes into a more detailed and marginally less manic explanation.

"She's super cute, and really funny, and she laughs at all my jokes, and she likes all the same things I like, and she's super cute."

"You already said that," Ohno and Kazunari chime in unison.

"Ah, did I? Well, she is. She's just that cute." Aiba finishes with a self-satisfied grin on his face and a gleam in his eye that challenges Kazunari to respond.

Kazunari blandly turns to Ohno's teacup and fishes out another lensful of tea.

"Where did you meet her, Aiba-chan?"

"At work!"

"At the post office?"

"Yes, at the post office. And there's no need for that scornful tone of voice. I know fairies can speak telepathically, but we humans still depend on the mail service for precious goods and important documents."

Kazunari stares blankly at Aiba. "So what's her name?" he asks in monotone.

Aiba looks displeased but responds anyway. "Her name is Becky. She just transferred from Yokohama. And she's super cute!"

Kazunari eyes widen as he wildly reaffirms his understanding of her sublime beauty, and Ohno giggles into his tea.

.

"Aren't you lonely?" Ohno asks one day, lying on his belly on the couch.

Kazunari blinks down from the arm rest and smiles. "Hm?" He's starting to get used to the random questions.

"You're all by yourself, aren't you? You don't have any coworkers or childhood friends or even family members. Doesn't that make you lonely?"

Kazunari shrugs. "I don't know what lonely means. Just because I'm alone, that doesn't make me lonely. Besides," he says simply, "I have you." He means it as a simple statement of fact, but Ohno shines more brightly than glitter.

Ohno tries to turn over but runs into the back of the couch. He stays there, at an 81-degree angle, and crosses his arms over his chest. "You would have been a little shit when you were younger," he says profoundly.

"Hey, what's with that attitude? I'm so good to you!"

Ohno chuckles and continues. "You would have pulled pranks on all of the other kids, and answered all of the questions in class out loud before anyone else could, and paid attention just enough to get full marks on all of your tests."

Kazunari grins and flicks a shard of glitter at Ohno. It dissipates before it can land. "You don't know that. I bet I would have been a lonely kid."

"I thought you didn't know what lonely means."

Kazunari smiles wryly.

"And besides, you have me, don't you?"

Kazunari nods even though Ohno's not watching. "I guess I do."

Ohno continues his story about Kazunari's childhood -- about dates in the park with other fairies and fairy grass lot baseball, which he then realizes no one can win since they all fly anyway. Kazunari knows it's all nonsense, but he folds his wings back, bringing his knees up and wrapping his arms around his legs. He smiles and listens to the stories and feels proud of himself. Ohno's mind is finally starting to come into rainbow-colored focus.

.

"What's it like to have a family?" Kazunari asks from his perch on the windowsill as Ohno comes out of the bath one night. Kazunari likes to start conversation. Conversation is good. Conversation gets Ohno's mind moving.

Ohno looks at him and ruffles his towel through his hair. He drops his towel to the floor and flops onto the bed, looking up at Kazunari once the quaking stops. "Don't you know by now?" Kazunari gets flustered momentarily and frowns down at his glowing limbs. He hates how embarrassment is so physically obvious for fairies. But Ohno smiles and continues, "It's the best feeling in the world."

.

Sometimes, Ohno wakes with the sun on the other side of the world. In Japan, it's afternoon, going on evening, and all Kazunari can hope for is a productive day's worth of dreams. Ohno yawns and stretches, and Kazunari wraps his arms and legs around the fingers that come into his territory on the windowsill. Ohno giggles and brings Kazunari forward to sit on his chest, rubbing disappearing glitter into his eyes and yawning again. "Hello."

"Good evening, Ohno-san. Did you dream well?"

"Mm. Something about unicorn tricycle gangs."

Kazunari doesn't know that unicorns can ride tricycles, but he grins anyway. "That sounds promising."

Ohno nods and sits up, and Kazunari flutters quickly into the air. Ohno stretches again and rolls his shoulders. "Aren't you sad that you don't sleep? Dreams are fun, you know."

Dreams are for people with lives to live. They're for people who have friends to share them with, and futures in which they can make them come true. They're not for fairies.

Kazunari pretends to think, pretends to come up with nothing. "I have nothing to dream about." He smirks. "Now get up and tell me more about your unicorns."

.

No one knows when the real inspiration is supposed to come, or if it already has. Kazunari has a grand vision of making a meaningless remark about feathers that sends Ohno running to the drawing room desk and coming back three days later with a perfect manuscript. But nothing he's done yet has inspired more than just snapshots of an imagined life or amorphous ideas. Ohno still isn't able to do anything with them, but Kazunari doesn't know what else to do. He decides arbitrarily that what he's doing now makes the most sense.

The dream retellings are getting more vivid, after all. Fairy instinct tells Kazunari that the more a person talks about his dreams, the better he remembers them, and that seems to be the case. But Kazunari is mostly interested because Ohno always seems to have such strange dreams. As he watches Ohno get ready for bed, he can't help but be excited for the night's adventures, and the next morning when he gets to hear all about them.

"Ohno-san, why did you want to become a writer?" Some conversation before bed.

Ohno brings the blanket up to his chin as he hums in thought. "My grandfather is a great man. My mother always said that he was the man she most admired, so I wanted to be like him."

"Didn't realize you were such a mama's boy, Ohno-san."

"Shut up. He really is a great man!"

Kazunari laughs quietly. "So, you wanted to become a writer like your grandfather. Did you write a lot when you were younger?"

Ohno shakes his head, and his hair bristles with a _swish-swish-swish_ against the worn pillowcase. "I drew a lot more than I wrote."

"That isn't limited to the past, is it?"

"I guess not." Ohno cranes his neck backwards and opens his mouth, pausing before he closes it again. It's a unique sight for Kazunari, who's seeing all of it upside-down, and he replays it in his mind a few times.

"What is it? Were you saying something?"

Ohno frowns. "I was going to ask you what you wanted to be when you grew up."

Kazunari stays quiet. He can hear Ohno's slow breathing and the whooping of the forest fairies in the distance. He opens his mouth to respond lightly, but Ohno beats him to it.

"I think it'd be fun to be a fairy. Is it exciting to fly?"

Kazunari splays his wings out and gives them a good flap from where he's sitting. He feels the air swirl around him, and the inevitable push from behind and below. He looks down at his impeccable outfit, at the perfectly-shaped top hat that he's thrown like a discus into the corner of the windowsill. There are some distinct advantages to being a fairy, and flying is most certainly one of them. "It _is_ exciting, actually."

Ohno grins, impressed. "Really?"

"I wish you could fly with me," Kazunari says with all his heart. "It's the best feeling in the world."

  
Once Ohno's drifted off into comfortable sleep and rumbling, Kazunari takes up his usual nighttime position and looks out the window, into the forest. The trees are starting to turn, patches of sunshine in the dark. Ohno would probably be able to draw it better than write it.

.

Ohno disappears into his sister's old room one day and comes back with a jigsaw puzzle. It's a giant puzzle -- five thousand microscopic pieces of bugs in grass.

"Look, Kazunari, it's you!"

"That's not funny, Ohno-san."

Ohno dumps the pieces into an avalanche on the coffee table, picks one up off the top, and places it carefully in some empty space. He sits back on his heels, examines the piece, and starts to dig for its companions.

Kazunari blinks. "Wouldn't it be easier to start from the edge?"

"Hm?"

"The edge pieces. You can recognize them. Start from the edge and work your way in."

"You can make so much more out of things when they're not contained within rigid lines."

This is Ohno's philosophy on life, Kazunari supposes. It sounds exactly like something an artist would say.

"Let me help you, then."

"Ah, really? That'd be great. I'm looking for a piece that'll fit with this one."

Kazunari smirks. "That extremely specific and identifiable piece with grass on it?"

Ohno chuckles. "Just help me, will you?"

"Yes, yes," Kazunari agrees with a wry smile. He lands on the coffee table and folds his wings back, picking up a piece from the edge of the pile and moving it toward a clear area. "Let's organize some of the pieces first."

.

The puzzle becomes a daily project. Some days they work for hours, and other days they make guilty faces at it while they sit on the couch together. One day when Aiba comes to visit, Kazunari screws his eyebrows together, throws his arms out, and guards it like a basketball player ready to claim an important rebound. "Don't touch it!" he yells. "Stop looking at it! Don't even visualize it in your mind! Ahh, ahhh, don't breathe in its vicinity, you'll get all the pieces warped!" Aiba laughs and flicks Kazunari in the butt and tells him to stop being obnoxious, and then picks him up and takes him to the kitchen table for tea.

"So how are things with Becky?"

"They're going great."

"I'm still amazed she'd go for you," Kazunari says, sipping his tea pleasantly.

"Hold on now, what do you mean by that?"

"You had to call her a dozen times before she agreed to go on a second date, right?"

"'Fine, meet me at the amusement park on Sunday. Stop calling me already.' Something like that," Ohno chimes in amusedly.

Aiba giggles despite himself. "Hey, whatever works."

"Is she still super cute?" Kazunari asks with exaggerated interest.

Aiba responds in kind. "She still is!"

  
The three of them work on the puzzle together, and the sounds of concentration and clattering pieces are all Kazunari can hear. At times they talk, at times they don't. It's quiet and comfortable and lovely until Aiba opens his mouth again.

"So what's it like being a fairy?" Is that his attempt at being conversational?

"What do you mean, what's it like? Fairydom is fairydom."

Aiba scowls. "I mean, is it fun?"

Kazunari shrugs and puts a piece into place, blowing the glitter off. "It depends on the charge, I guess. It's fun for me, at least." He smiles up at Ohno, who looks up from his pieces and smiles back.

"Leader, you said your grandfather told you about fairies, right?"

"Mm. He was in the same situation I am."

"You mean hopelessly lost until a dashing young fairy like me swooped in to come and save you?"

"Though I doubt that's how it's going."

" _You_ need to shut up. Didn't I tell you not to breathe on the puzzle pieces?"

"Yeah, my grandfather had an inspiration fairy for about a year. He said he came out of an old toy chest."

Kazunari frowns. "That sounds like a terrible place to find your inspiration. At least I came out of something related to what you're doing, right?"

"Blank books? It's about as related as anything could be," Ohno answers sheepishly.

"You'll get there, Leader!" Aiba slaps an encouraging hand onto Ohno's back, and the sudden movement in the air makes Kazunari topple.

  
After Aiba leaves, Ohno heads into the drawing room and sits at his desk. He scoots his sketch paper to the side and takes out lined writing paper, and for about thirty seconds he's leaning forward, pen hovering above the page, shoulders tense with the promise of creativity and expressive writing. But then he slumps, tosses the pen onto the desk with disgust, and sighs.

Kazunari hates how sad he looks.

.

Kazunari watches Ohno draw on napkins. He watches Ohno space out on the couch or in front of the puzzle or on his bed. He watches Ohno, always. Ohno seems lost, and Kazunari doesn't like it.

.

Kazunari takes up his usual position on the windowsill one night and watches Ohno, whose eyebrows are furrowed even in his sleep, who murmurs unhappy noises before rolling over and rumbling even louder. Kazunari's wings shake, and he draws his knees in closer to his chest. Damn this old house and its lack of insulation. He turns to look over his shoulder at the forest and realizes with a start that the leaves are all gone, and the landscape is bleached white.

How long has it been snowing? Why hadn't he noticed? The forest fairies are long gone now, and the snow fairies are probably hard at work, blowing warm air into animal burrows and coming up with new snowflake designs. Their job doesn't seem too bad. They don't have charges that get depressed about writing. They don't have bundles of smiles to recover.

.

Ohno sighs again and ruffles his hair with his hand. "Kazunari, let me draw you."

Kazunari takes off from Ohno's shoulder and stands on the desk. Anything to make him smile again. Maybe they can work on the puzzle later. Ohno always smiles when he's working on the puzzle. "Do you want me to pose?"

"Yeah, would you?" Kazunari squats and rests his arms on his knees. Ohno giggles. "That's not very becoming of a fairy."

"I'm posing. Just draw already!"

Ohno giggles again and zips his pen across the page. Kazunari watches him carefully, watches the way his eyes shine whenever he looks at Kazunari and finds something new to draw. Why can't he just be an artist? It's so much more natural for him.

Giggles of delight turn into snickers of mischief, and Kazunari narrows his eyes. "What are you drawing?"

Another snicker. "Hm?"

Kazunari cranes his neck up and looks at the drawing. It's a reasonable portrait of him -- very good, actually -- with intricate webs of lines filling in the shadows and a somehow ethereal glow enveloping him. And then next to it is a simple head shot of him grinning and saluting, surrounded by loud sparkles.

"Wait a minute, that's not what I was doing at all!"

"You look good though, right? Like someone I want to hit in the face."

Kazunari flies up and tugs at Ohno's ear, and Ohno laughs and bats him away weakly. "Aren't you supposed to be writing anyway?" Ohno just keeps laughing.

.

When he goes to his windowsill, he finds a tiny pillow and blanket that match Ohno's almost exactly. The pillow is handsewn along two sides very carefully, and the blanket is hemmed along the edges. Kazunari looks down at Ohno's bed to see Ohno's own pillow and blanket not quite the same as before.

He frowns at Ohno from all the way across the room until he gets to his bed. Ohno pouts. "You don't like them? I made them while you were working on the puzzle."

"I don't sleep, remember?" Kazunari says petulantly, wrapping the blanket tighter around his shoulders. It's warmer than a blanket has any right to be.

Ohno smiles. "Come try it sometime, even if you don't need it. There's always room on my pillow."

.

Kazunari hovers in front of the bookshelf one day, looking nonchalantly at the books on the shelf. Ohno comes in after him, wiping his sudsy hands on his pants.

"I told you, they're empty," Ohno says. "There's nothing written in them." He picks a random volume and plucks it from between its companions, opening to a page in the middle to reveal...

"Huh? This wasn't here before."

Kazunari blinks down at the page. It's a story about doing laundry, all in Ohno's handwriting. Kazunari spots his own name and recognizes it to be a retelling of an incident from a week back. "You didn't write this?" he asks cautiously.

Ohno shakes his head, flipping to the next page, and the next, all filled with little stories about them. He shuts the book and opens it from the end, skipping back through empty pages until he finds it: motion. Ink crawls across the page, and they watch it as it forms letters in lazy and fluid strokes, just the way Ohno writes them.

Kazunari dictates the strokes as they happen. "One, ten... tree... book. Book! Is this..." He zips down and turns back a page, skimming the words. Ohno and Kazunari are at the kitchen sink after dinner, and Kazunari has soap bubbles all over him from their impromptu bubble war. "This book is about us."

Ohno turns the page forward again and watches in amazement as the characters keep appearing, stroke after stroke. "Ahh, cool... so that's how you write that character..."

"Ohno-san, can you put that down for a second and look at some other books?"

"Hm? Oh, yeah." Ohno retrieves another book and flips through it. "This is from... a few weeks back, I think. From when we went to play outside and you had to change the color of your tuxedo so you wouldn't get lost in the snow."

"Huh. Then are all of these books about us?" Kazunari crosses his arms over his chest. What could it mean?

"Maybe this is what my grandfather meant by inspiration."

Inspiration? Oh. Kazunari blinks. His job. Right.

.

Aiba can't stay; he has a hot date with Becky. And by "hot" he means they're going to warm each other up. In the sack. With sex. If they know what he means.

"We know what you mean," Kazunari assures him.

But he drops off a package because for once he's doing his job. He makes a teasing comment about how the fairies have been breaking icicle stalactites just to keep him safe, and Kazunari scowls and tells Aiba that unfortunately, he's right about the fairies for once. Aiba tries to wink but looks instead like he's having an aneurysm, and he hops away like a snowshoe hare to be with his girlfriend for the night.

Kazunari looks on curiously as Ohno takes the package to the kitchen table. He can feel Ohno's excitement surge through his wings. "What did you get?"

"I asked Mina-neechan for a favor."

"That doesn't answer my question," he counters affectionately.

Ohno ignores him and peels the paper away, bit by bit, to reveal a plastic tub, small and blue and all too foreboding. He grins up at Kazunari and takes the top off to reveal clothes. Tiny clothes. With wing slits. Fuck.

"What have I ever done to you?"

.

Somewhere between Ken's first and second set of (admittedly very comfortable) pajamas, Kazunari starts sleeping. He tucks his wings in and lies down on the far end of Ohno's pillow and closes his eyes and turns off his brain. It's a weird sensation, sleeping. Fairies are supposed to be constantly watching, thinking, coming up with new ways to be doing whatever they're doing. But Kazunari is content this way, content with taking some time off from running into a wall over and over again. Plus, Ohno wants him to try sleeping, and he always wants to do what makes Ohno happy.

It's dreamless sleep, and when he wakes up, he feels the same as he did when he fell asleep: existent. He imagines it's more satisfying for humans since they actually get tired and feel refreshed afterwards, but for Kazunari, it's like a really long blink.

The part that makes it worth it is the moment he turns his head and sees Ohno smiling at him from the other end of the pillow. "I didn't squish you," he says proudly. It's like his "good morning" now.

"You never squish me," Kazunari says in return.

  
"I wonder what fairies dream about," Ohno says around his toothbrush.

Kazunari looks at his reflection in the mirror and runs his tongue over his teeth. Nothing. Magically clean. "Nothing so far, but I'll let you know."

Ohno brushes, spits, gurgles, spits, brushes, gurgles, spits. It's still a stupid sequence, but Kazunari stopped minding a long time ago.

"I had a dream about you."

"Hmm, did you? What happened?"

"You were big, and you were living in my house with me."

Kazunari's stopped asking about his dreams, but he wants to know more about this one. Instead he just says, "Sounds like a nice dream."

.

It's spring when they finally finish the puzzle. Kazunari decides that bugs are horribly ugly, and they don't deserve to have five thousand pieces wasted on them. But when Aiba brings Becky over for the first time and she grins down at the puzzle and chooses the stag beetle as her favorite because it looks just like her good-for-nothing boyfriend, Kazunari can't help but agree with her.

The puzzle isn't the only thing they have to show and tell: Ohno's finished a full draft of his story. It's a picture book, actually, and not a novel like he'd originally thought. It's a cute little tale about a man and the fairy who comes to be his friend, and it's full of ups and downs and magic and everything else a picture book should have. But the big pull is the illustrations, full and rich and masterful, like they're going straight to print in every child's imagination. Ohno smiles happily as Aiba and Becky sort through the pages, as their eyes widen at the magnificent artwork and they scoot imperceptibly closer at the happy ending. Kazunari watches Ohno the entire time, and even though he had no hand in the final product, when he sees Ohno's face light up, he feels the happiness like it's his own.

  
They spend the rest of the night writing up a query to be sent off to Ohno's grandfather's literary agent.

"How am I supposed to summarize a picture book?"

"Fairy! Draw a fairy!"

"He already drew a fairy! Didn't you read the book?"

"You don't have a computer? Shouldn't we type this up?"

"Leader likes being disconnected from the world."

"Why do you call him Leader anyway?"

"Ah, I never told you? It's because I think he looks like a boat captain."

"Then shouldn't you call him Captain? God, you're dumb."

"Hey! I'm not dumb!"

"He's quite smart about some things! And great in bed."

"No one needed to know that."

"Everyone!" Ohno looks desperate and pathetic. "Summary?"

.

Kazunari wants to write his own story. It'll be based on the dream that Ohno had -- the one where he's big and they live together in the house, where they spend time together and have fun together, and they're happy and healthy and maybe in love a little bit. He wonders if Ohno would illustrate it for him, but he doesn't dare ask.

.

Ohno smacks the book shut and returns it to the shelf. Another book has been written. There are only a few left.

"Kazu, do you want to start another puzzle?"

Kazunari smiles solemnly. "Will we finish it?"

.

The query comes back with a note.

 _Satoshi-kun, good to hear from you. I'm retired now, but I've sent your query out to some children's book publishers I know. Hopefully you'll be getting some good news soon. Send my regards to your grandfather._

"It pays to know someone in the industry," Ohno says shamelessly.

"It pays to write an amazing story," Kazunari counters, smirking. "Especially since I'm in it."

"Oh, didn't I tell you? I changed the magical being best friend to a tricycle-riding unicorn. I hope you don't mind."

Kazunari digs his heel into Ohno's shoulder, and Ohno whimpers dramatically before he shoos him away and gets ready for his bath.

  
Kazunari dreams that night, for the first time. Ohno's gotten published, and they've just received the first copy of the book in the mail. He turns to Kazunari and kisses him, and Kazunari melts into it, kissing back.

When Kazunari wakes up, he tells Ohno that he dreamed.

A grin explodes across Ohno's face. "What was it about?"

Kazunari considers telling him everything, but in the end he just says the important part, the part that'll actually happen. "You got published."

Impossibly, Ohno's grin grows.

.

Aiba brings the fateful envelope one day. It's white and normal and not at all indicative of the importance of what's inside. Ohno teases it open nervously as Aiba and Kazunari look on. He slips the paper out of the envelope, and it quivers with his trembling fingers. He moves to unfold the paper...

And he stops.

"Ah, I can't do it! Kazu, read it for me!"

"What are you, ten?"

Aiba takes the paper and waits until Kazunari's standing on his shoulder before he unfolds it. And at the sight of _I am delighted_ , Kazunari can't keep the grin off his face. Ohno grabs the paper out of Aiba's hands with an echoing crunch and he flips it around to read it, overjoyed.

Aiba calls up Becky and tells her to come and bring all the alcohol she can carry. He listens, giggles, and hangs up. Kazunari almost asks him to wait before he says anything because he can't hear a sound over the joy running through his veins. It's like what he imagines adrenaline must feel like. It's overwhelming.

Aiba waits. He's smart about some things, after all. After Kazunari feels suitably calm, he nods, and Ohno nods as well. "Becky's bringing her car," he reports. He grins excitedly. "That's a lot of booze."

Aiba and Becky fall asleep curled up on the couch, Aiba's hand inching its way up Becky's shirt in a way that's far from lewd and much closer to loving. Ohno finishes his glass of tequila and slams it down on the table with gusto. The ice cubes jiggle in a satisfied dance of success, and Ohno grabs Kazunari none too gently before bringing him to bed. He drops face-first into the pillow, turns. Smiles a drunk and happy smile.

"We did it, Kazu. We're going to get published."

Kazunari squirms a little to look straight at Ohno. He feels snug in his hand, but it's warm. He doesn't mind it. "Congratulations, Ohno-san."

Ohno nods, and his eyes droop. He falls asleep quickly. His breath is thick with alcohol and triumph like a lingering memento. His lips are slightly parted, and Kazunari can't stop staring at them.

  
When Kazunari wakes up, Ohno's nowhere to be found. But Kazunari's tucked under his little blanket with care, and he knows he has nothing to worry about. He flies out of the bedroom and follows Ohno's trail of warmth downstairs to the drawing room, where he finds Ohno sitting on the floor in front of the bookshelf with a book in his hands. Kazunari looks up at the shelf and doesn't immediately find the open slot, but it's there. They're on the last book.

They spend their last days together filling the book with everything they can think of. They draw, they write, they nap, they drink tea, they talk about nothing, they look out at the forest and decide that they're too lazy to go exploring. Kazunari's glitter takes over the house, but neither of them does anything to brush it into the air.

"I don't want you to leave," Ohno says quietly, clicking a puzzle piece into place. Ohno still starts from the middle, but this time, Kazunari's not being indulgent. He builds the frame first.

"It's not something I can control."

.

Ohno hangs up the phone and gives it back to Aiba, nodding graciously. "Sorry about that. I asked Mina-neechan to get me a phone, so I'll let you know when it arrives, and I won't have to borrow your phone anymore."

Aiba crosses his arms in mock indignance. "I'm the one who's going to deliver it to you, so I'll know! Unless you're thinking of switching to a different mailman..."

"No, not at all. You're the best, Aiba-chan."

Aiba nods smugly. "That's what my girlfriend says, too. Speaking of which..."

"Don't be late!" Ohno smirks.

"Too late," Kazunari says knowingly.

"Shut up, you're no help! See you later!" Aiba calls as he runs down the steps toward the gravel path.

"Ah, look at him go," Kazunari says with an air of synthetic nostalgia. "That's what youth looks like."

Ohno giggles and shuts the door. "What do I look like, I wonder."

Kazunari knows the answer, but he doesn't say it.

Ohno smiles up at him questioningly. He doesn't have wings, but he reads the air as well as any fairy.

"You probably won't be needing me anymore after this, huh?"

Ohno's smile drops. For a second, he looks like a rebel, like someone who's ready to take on the world for his cause, for the thing he believes in. Kazunari lets himself think that he's that cause. If he's leaving soon anyway, he may as well go out hopelessly, tragically happy.

Ohno looks at his feet for a long moment before he leads them into the drawing room and takes the last book off the shelf. He turns it over and opens it from the back, flipping forward a page. The lines trickle across the paper as they detail the conversation that Ohno's just had with his agent. The book is a go, though they'll have to work on the word placement. They'll send in high-quality paper and pencils for Ohno to draw with. Please let them know when he finally gets his own phone to use.

Ohno flips it back to the last page in the book. It's still blank.

"I wonder what happens here," Kazunari muses.

Ohno's jaw visibly clenches, and then relaxes again. "Do you think I get to decide?"

Kazunari shrugs. "Give it a try."

Ohno gropes for a pen and fails to find one, stepping to the desk to grab one before coming back to the bookshelf. He draws himself, smiling, holding a book in his hands. And then he looks at Kazunari for a brief moment -- though Kazunari doesn't know why; he's drawn him enough to know what he looks like from memory -- before drawing him as well. Barely taller than Ohno, cut a little slimmer, but more or less the same size. Without the wings.

He pen stills over the paper for the briefest of moments before he writes, _I love you._

Startled, Kazunari blinks. And when he opens his eyes again, he's standing on the ground, full size. Without the wings. Ohno turns to him, and Kazunari steps into his lips.

Ohno drops the book, makes a noise. Kazunari slips his tongue into Ohno's mouth, and Ohno gasps, wrapping his arms around Kazunari's waist and kissing back.

"Kazu," Ohno whispers between kisses. "Kazu, Kazu... I don't want you to go." Kazunari feels Ohno's hands grip his hips as he walks them back against the bookshelf, feels himself pressed between the shelves and Ohno's body and Ohno's hands and Ohno's lips, lips, lips, tongue, lips, teeth, tongue, lips, again and again. Kazunari feels warm. He feels the blood rush through his body, he feels his heart bursting through his chest as he scrambles to get as close to Ohno as possible. He's hungry, he's desperate, he's making noises in his throat he never knew he could make.

He feels human. He feels alive.

Ohno steps back, breathing hard. He's covered in glitter, and Kazunari feels even warmer. Kazunari brings him back in for a lingering open-mouthed kiss before yanking him into a hug.

"Is this it?" Ohno murmurs into his neck, pressing his lips against the skin in gentle adoration.

Kazunari sighs and pushes Ohno back, away. He can't stay. He can't want more, because he won't be able to have it.

"Is this our goodbye kiss?" Ohno leans forward to give Kazunari one more long, slow kiss. He pulls away again, and Kazunari brushes the glitter off his lips with his thumb.

"No wonder you needed inspiration. That was a shitty goodbye."

Ohno grins. "We'll have to try it again sometime," he says, his voice quavering the tiniest bit.

Kazunari nods. He lets his hand trail down Ohno's arm before he bends down to pick up the book and the pen. He's not sure how to use it when he's not holding it with both arms, but he mimicks Ohno's grip, a grip he's watched and fallen in love with. Under Ohno's last line, he writes, _I love you, too._ And then, at the very bottom,

 _The end._

Kazunari looks up at Ohno and smiles quietly. Ohno smiles back, though they both know that neither of them is as strong as they're pretending to be. Kazunari leans forward and kisses Ohno's cheek, a suspended moment in time, before he evaporates into a shimmering mist. His final wish is to stay on Ohno's skin forever.

***

Occasionally, very occasionally, fairies can come back in human form. But that's only when they've become special, when they've proven to have more value than just as temporary sources of inspiration. It's a glitch in fairies' genetic makeup, something to do with the deepest kinds of hopes and dreams. When a charge wishes hard, wishes more than anything in the world, that a fairy will stay -- not just as a source of inspiration, but as the most important person in the charge's life -- then he will.

"Occasionally" isn't quite the right word for it, though. In fairy history, it's only happened once.

The brass knocker thumps against the door energetically. Ohno turns his head, putting his pen down and pushing away from the desk. He stands up and walks across the house, his socked feet padding quietly against the cold floor.

When he opens the door, Aiba is on the other side, wearing a thick coat and huffing into his gloves. Aiba looks up at him as snowflakes continue to fall on his head.

"Aiba-chan, long time no see." Ohno steps aside and opens the door wider. "Do you have a package for me?"

Aiba giggles and steps into the house, taking off his coat. "How are you doing? How's writing going?"

Ohno smiles. "Better than ever."

A displeased grunt comes from the drawing room. "Is that Aiba-san?"

"Kazu, come say hello!"

"No thanks! He makes me wish I never came back!"

Aiba yells a wordless yell. "You'd think after eleven years, that joke would get old!"

Kazunari steps into the doorway of the drawing room. He leans against the door frame with his hands folded over his chest, smirking. "You'd think after eleven years, it wouldn't still affect you." He smiles affectionately.

Ohno pushes Aiba forward, amused. "Now, now, let's all play nice. It's cold outside, isn't it? Let's warm up with some tea."

Music plays. It sounds like laughter, like the clinking of teacups, like playful bickering and comfortable silence. Under the table, Kazunari threads his fingers through Ohno's. Sometimes Ohno still expects to have to brush glitter off his hand when he lets go, but maybe that's only because it's Kazunari. Even eleven years after he's finished his job as a fairy, he still shines.

It's a splendid old house with crumbling red brick and tired white pillars and boisterous green vines that buzz with life as they paint their way toward the roof. That night, it's covered with a thick dusting of snow. Winter bites at the corners of the house, at the subdued garden, at the muddy gravel path.

Ohno squeezes Kazunari's hand tighter. It's terribly cold outside, but Ohno feels warm.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Three Stories (The Finished Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/316955) by [elfiepike](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elfiepike/pseuds/elfiepike)




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